a million little pieces

I’ve been up for almost 30 hours save for the 20 minute cat nap I managed to squeeze in before my itunes skipped over my library of ryan adams and started blaring a santogold remix right as I drifted off. oh well. It wasn’t until I got home from a really darling miniature thai food dinner party that things got hairy and I embarked upon a less than fantastic voyage of sleeplessness. at a thrift store yesterday I happened across a book called “written on the body”, and though the cheesy erotic clip art on the cover originally deterred me, I knew I’d heard of it somewhere before. reading the flap, I realized that jorge had recommend that I read it many years ago. all I’d known of the plot was that it was a love story written from the point of view of a protagonist of unspecific gender. that sounded intriguing… worth a buck, at least, so I picked it up along with an e.e. cummings anthology and made for the register.

It was exciting in a way to have snatched back a little fleeting memory of us that was for all intensive purposes lost; it was a second chance at taking his advice, which was always top notch, that I’ll never be on the receiving end of again. maybe it wasn’t a sign, but perhaps just a small something that could be comforting, make it easier to pretend that he’s floating on foam pool noodles in the tropics instead of six feet under in florida. I deemed it my bedtime reading material and curled up in bed with rufus and started in on it, to discover that it bore more eerie similarities to Jorge and I’s doomed relationship than I was comfortable with, and stirred up some really unpleasant emotions that I have bottled up and shoved in the recesses of my psyche to save for when I can afford therapy for a REASON. It was like a brilliantly written british literary gumbo of true love, infidelity, cancer, death, terrible timing and abandonment. and I couldn’t put it down. so I read it cover to cover, and then laid staring at the wall until dawn with a tornado of hurt and confusion in my head, went to get coffee at 7:30 and spent the afternoon walking around manhattan in a daze. I couldn’t have just picked up “goodnight moon” or “authentic ethiopian cooking”? I had to pick the footlong dildo of mindfuck reading material and go to browntown with no lube?

here is an excerpt:

“’You’ll get over it…’ It’s the clichés that cause the trouble. To lose someone you love is to alter your life for ever. You don’t get over it because ‘it’ is the person you loved. The pain stops, there are new people, but the gap never closes. How could it? The particularness of someone who mattered enough to grieve over is not made anodyne by death. This hole in my heart is in the shape of you and no-one else can fit it. Why would I want them to?

I’ve thought a lot about death recently, the finality of it, the argument ending mid-air. One of us hadn’t finished, why did the other one go? And why without warning? Even death after long illness is without warning. The moment you had prepared for so carefully took you by storm. The troops broke through the window, snatched the body and the body is gone. The day before the Wednesday last, this time a year ago, you were here, and now you’re not. Why not? Death reduces us to the baffled logic of a small child. If yesterday than why not today? And where are you?

Fragile creatures of a small blue planet, surrounded by light years of silent space. Do the dead find peace beyond the rattle of the world? What peace is there for us whose best love cannot return them even for a day? I raise my head to the door and think I will see you in the frame. I know it is your voice in the corridor but when I run outside the corridor is empty. There is nothing I can do that will make any difference. The last word was yours.

The fluttering in my stomach goes away and the dull waking pain. Sometimes I think of you and feel giddy. Memory makes me lightheaded, drunk on champagne. All the things we did. And if anyone had said that this was the price I would have agreed to pay it. That surprises me; that with the hurt and the mess comes a shaft of recognition. It was worth it. Love is worth it.”

-Jeanette Winterson

I don’t have much more to offer on this right now (largely due to being braindead until I get some rest), other than I highly recommend that you pick up a copy of the book. it probably will not give you a nervous breakdown-lite, and there is some really unique prose between its covers. every time I think that I’m “over it”, there’s always something there to remind me otherwise. hope you’re resting peacefully, Jorge. thanks for the free membership to the book club beyond the grave. I’d like to see oprah top that shit.


“Written on the body is a secret code only visible in certain lights; the accumulations of a lifetime gather there. In places the palimpsest is so heavily worked that the letters feel like Braille. I like to keep my body rolled up away from prying eyes. Never unfold too much, tell the whole story. I didn’t know that Louise would have reading hands. She has translated me into her own book.”

devil may care

friday morning: discuss.

woke up to more passive aggressive post its on the fridge after drunkenly demolishing my roommate's leftover pizza last night when I got home from an evening about town that smacked of my trite and exorbitant first year in town as dj motley c. I suppose that's what I should expect from cruising around to hipster bars to flyer for a band called the downer party in a car full of barely legal dudes in leather jackets driven by a 19 year old girl with a sonic youth tattoo who I didn't care to ask how many sparks she'd had. nice kids, admittedly, one of them being max scoville, who has barely begun his excellent san francisco adventure... and it's fascinating to see that the kids are indeed alright, but they're still doing the same old shit. somehow I became the docent of my own milestone memory tour, passing the crunk station, the marrakesh joint in the tl, the old arrow (cum matador), the thursday night beat poet society at 16th bart, delirium, 330 ritch, and finally, the rickshaw. looking askance at its menacing orange door, I knew it was time for grandma to go home-- I don't play that game anymore. as much as some things never change, I'm no longer dolled up to get a photographer's attention for my 2 minutes of myspace bulletin fame, I don't have room for your glossy 4x6's in my purse, and the drug dealer is not invited to my afterparty. motley c and the girl gang formerly known as 3P is finally dead.

I'll never forget this blurry exchange from a couple of halloweens ago, spun out on god knows what and dressed up as an electro ladybug. sometime around 4 in the morning I passed stefan who was laying on the floor in a hallway of the warehouse with his head and shoulder propped up on the wall at an unnatural angle, drenched in sweat so that his dyed black bangs were slick and plastered across his furrowed forehead, wearing a dress shirt that could have benefitted from a proper wringing. I'd stopped and knelt down beside him, trying to heft his dead weight up into a posture that might do a double service in being more comfortable and also making him look less like a wasted burnout.

"what are you doing still here?" he asked.

"party goes 'til 6." I replied.

"getting your twenty bucks worth?"

"I was on the list."

"smart ass."

"what? I was!"

"no, I mean, what are you doing... still here." he widened his eyes dramatically as he asked. "because you need to get out."

"I am not sure I follow." I could feel my stomach lurching, full of pills and some acerbic alcoholic concoction.

"you know," stefan snorted, a signature character tic, "you know why I was such a dick to you when you first came around?"

"because you're an asshole?" I smiled sardonically.

"yeah, and also because I know you're too good for this. you're wasting yourself on this. take a look and tell me what you see." a rivulet of sweat streamed down his pallid cheek, his face stern. "I see the same old people doing the same shit. I'm 38, and I know, I know what they've already taken from you, but it's not too late. these people are vampires."

we sat there, locked in a stare that felt an eternity long with our dilated pupils boring into each other.

"I'll go when I'm ready." I said, incapable of mendacity.

"he's not coming back, and you won't either. look, I'm sorry. I don't want to see you around anymore, and I mean that in the best way possible."

"I know. but for a second there I thought you were just being a dick again."

I stood up, adjusting my wings. a group of people scuttled by, trying to find an inconspicuous place to do key bumps, stilettos glinting like switchblades with their faces bearing uniformly blank, unctuous expressions. later on when the warehouse was shutting down, lindsay, maren and I were standing in the middle of polk street and flagged a cab that was hotly pursued by a girl dressed as a zombie who was sobbing hysterically and banging on the trunk, wailing about how she'd been waiting longer than us. I turned back around, avoiding eye contact with her as I asked if my friends thought we should let her in.

"honey," maren said prudently, "good girls don't hang out in the tenderloin at 6 am."

still waiting

last night, I dreamt of jorge for the first time in over a year. I started awake before dawn and frantically tried to fall asleep again to chase him back to that ephemeral plane, and only succeeded in riling myself up beyond any shadow of an unconscious possibility. the dream was astonishingly vivid, two years seeming to reduce to a blip on a radar, suddenly my senses filled up with him like a hot air balloon, and I found myself bombarded by the simplest idiosyncrasies that I used to take for granted.

I wonder sometimes if I'll ever love as fiercely, as unconditionally, as purely and recklessly as with my first love. we were a force, and we were unstoppable. I still pore over the last night I saw him, the sharp white lines, bottomless drinks, seedy bars, mist underneath street lamps, and tear stained faces smearing in an alleyway in the tenderloin. when he left me there, I'd thrown my arms around his neck and squeezed my eyes shut tight, praying for a miracle, even a small one, a changed mind. I had no idea.

our friend passed us and flippantly asked why we were embracing as if we'd never see each other again. he told her to stop being so dramatic.

during the wake, I called aaron from a bathroom floor, mopping up my torrent of tears with a black skirt, holding my finger over a lit candle to make sure I could still feel. my skin bubbled. my voice was muffled and childlike, slow and cracking like an old recording, foreign even to myself. terrifyingly numb, I asked him, "how am I ever going to get through this?", and he'd said, "honestly, kid? you'll wake up every morning and lie to yourself. you will tell yourself you are alright. and one day, you'll wake up, and it will be true."

diamonds

I went to bed at three and woke up just before six, chest tight, eyes wide, muscles tensed, heart pounding. my room looks cumbersomely huge and empty, and the traffic on fell street is just beginning to take on its frenetic pace that usually stands between me and slumber in the dawn hours these days. after the bar closed I departed from my friends and went to the corner store, picking up a pack of cigarettes and a bottle of champagne, but when I went home I set them on the bedside table unopened and draped myself across my freshly fabric softened duvet, turning away from them apathetically. I read an article in the new vanity fair that depicted marilyn's last days and mysterious remaining personal effects, including filing cabinets of love letters and the 15 bottles of prescription pills that they found with her. I suppose that my fascination with her was a seed planted by my parents, and as a child I would fantasize more about growing up to be like ms. monroe than other little girls were dreaming of picket fences and a prince charming. I don't own a single diamond and I'm already too long in the tooth to make it to hollywood, so it turns out all we have in common is blonde hair, epic boobs and insomnia.

I know that things will get better, (they have to), but being at peace with being alone is incredibly hard for me right now. I hate that this blanket of discontent has landed so squarely. I'm at a loss for ideas. my words are even backed up, writing feels strained and unnatural to me, as alien as voluntarily eating vegetables or wearing sneakers. I've got a hunger to get myself out of this hole but not enough energy to do it. I'm tired, I'm tired, I'm tired. and I can't sleep.

this photo of marilyn has been my favorite since I first saw it.



it was part of the reason that I became enamored with the vaguely out of reach fantasy of living in a big city. there's something so organically grand and simple about gazing off of rooftops surrounded by tall buildings at a city whom you love despite its trespasses who loves you back in spite of yours. that look that she has is like a freeze frame of falling in love, but resignedly so. I saw the same expression on jorge's face years ago on a different rooftop, 26 floors above sutter street, with his soft cuban tresses being tossed by the wind from the bay. it had unnerved and elated me to witness such childlike wonder overtake an old soul, to see a full grown man humbled and reverent to a skyline. I miss him terribly, and in times of such duress, I constantly wish that there was some way that I could pick up a phone and hear his voice on the other end, calming in such an unbelievable capacity, regardless of what was being said. the loss is heavy and palpable, and I'm frustrated with its seemingly vengeful flare up. it leads me to wonder, will it ever get better? two and a half years later and I'm still feeling like there's a gaping hole in my life, and nothing can fill it. is this the same gaping hole that killed him?

even if fate had dealt a different hand, we'd either have had a catastrophic supernova of a heart shattering break up, or have eloped to morocco. in any case, he'd have been my best friend for the rest of my life. so, I've had this band-aid on an exit wound. every time I feel this way I numb myself, either with substances or just by a calculated method of distraction. maybe it is time to sit with it. and then, this way, maybe it will be easier to get back up and keep going.

I love you, jorge. I still can't believe you're not here.